Despair and Shades
by OtterAndTerrier
Summary: What if everthing had gone wrong in the last battle? What if not only Voldemort had gone, but also the person you love? A dramatic one-shot. Disclaimer, since I forgot it: all the characters and the HP universe comes from JK Rowling's mind; not mine.


Despair and Shades

**Despair and Shades**

'Minister … Minister!'

The Minister's eyes were unfocused, as if he were Imperiused.

'Minister! Er … Mr Weasley?'

Nothing happened. The man tried again, with the only name that the Minister recognised.

'Ron?'

'Eh? What's up?' he answered finally, the startled red-haired man sitting at the ornated wooden desk. 'Oh, um … sorry, what do you need, Seamus?'

'You have to check and approve this documents about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks importation; at half past eight there is an important meeting with Wizengamot members; Lav— Miss Brown has phoned about an hour ago asking for you, and so your mother has; she said she wants you to talk, and you also must go to the Aurors Headquarters ─ there are new Aurors, remember?'

'Oh … yes, of course I do,' retorted Ron, composing himself on the chair. 'Let's set on work, then!'

The Minister Undersecretary, Seamus Finnigan, looked at him, concerned, but did not say anything and left the office. Again, the shadows. While the euphoria of the first days went by, the Minister's face had turned sad, and grey. It was common to see him with the sight wandering up to the ceiling, hearing to nobody … But he wasn't cursed at all, Seamus knew that, and could guess what worried him.

When the wizard left, Ron merely glanced at the papers and signed them. Then he started to put in order his desk. 'I have to keep my head cool, try to think of another things, I must do that. Otherwise, I'm gonna be out of my mind.'

That day was, definitely, a hard workday. When Ron finally arrived home, he was still thinking about all the stuff he had to do. 'At least, I could get away from Lavender ─ How could she still be thinking I'd wanna remake my love life?' thought Ron coming into his house.

'How, after all the undergone?' said Ron, serving himself a glass of Firewhiskey. 'Can't anybody understand my pain, my suffering?' asked Ron to the empty walls. He thought they could not. Because nobody had seen what he saw. Because he had not seen only Harry Potter and Hermione Granger dying. He had seen more than that.

She was sitting beside him, the moonlight glittering upon her hair; that bushy, brown hair he liked so much, since so long time ago. And now, they were so close to death, he couldn't die without telling her …

'Hermione.'

She was silent, tears streaming down her cheeks.

'Hermione, I have to tell you something.'

She looked at him, frightened, widening her eyes.

'Is it serious?'

'Well, I don't' think so, but …'

'What?'

Ron took a deep breath.

'I love you, Hermione, I've loved you since the second time I saw you in danger, and I was so fool that I didn't realise and I missed all those years I could spent with you if we'd had been together, and now all's gone and I had to …'

'Don't say more,' said Hermione, and then leaning forwards she kissed him like both of them had dreamt of. Ron could feel her wet face, her scent.

'I did too, Ron. I love you and I was so silly too. But it will be all right, don't worry now,' she said, when they finally parted.

He hugged her and whispered, 'That's impossible. But I wanna ask you something.'

Immediately after, he knelt down at her feet, took up both of her hands and said:

'Would you, Hermione Jean Granger, accept me like … like your husband, in spite of us being 17 and I made you suffer and we could be dead right now?'

Hermione's sight was stuck upon him, her mouth open and clearly astonished. Then she said, 'I don't know.' She smiled for the first time. 'Of course, I do, Ron, I do!'

Now it was Ron who kissed her. When they parted again, Ron made a tried flourish movement with his wand, and a precious ring materialized out of thin air.

'Oh Ron …' She was simply without words.

'I've been practising for a while,' he retorted, placing the ring in her finger. 'It's not so much, but it'll do 'til I can get a real ─'

But he was cut suddenly for a cold, high voice, Voldemort's voice, saying … that Harry had died.

No, that could not be true, Harry was alive and Voldemort was lying. Still confused, Ron hold Hermione's hand and pulled her up to the castle wooden front doors. All the fighters were standing there, surrounding something that only might be …

'NO!' yelled McGonagall.

And when they finally found a way through the crowd, they saw him.

'No,' whispered both Ron and Hermione. 'Harry!' '_Harry!_'

Voldemort laughed with disgusting joy. And began saying that Harry had died trying to escape form him, and he was touching him with his horrible foot …

'He beat you!' yelled Ron at once, and while all the crowd started shouting and screaming, he saw a silver glint just behind Voldemort's shoulder, where the huge snake was resting. As Voldemort realised of what was going on, it's head was lying on the ground.

'NO!' he yelled, and turning around said, 'Avada Kedavra!'

And by the time it took for Ron to realise that Hermione wasn't beside him anymore, all the eyes were watching full of tears the corpse that now, too, rested on the ground.

She was dead.

Without thinking, without even think what he was doing, or whether it will work, Ron drew out his wand, pointed it to the man who had stolen her life, and bellowed, 'Avada Kedavra!' The force with which he cast the curse was so powerful that it threw Voldemort's body at least twenty feet away, and then he was dead, curled pathetically on the muddy ground.

It was the end. But not only the end of Lord Voldemort, not only the end of his Death Eaters or of his reign of horror or of the death floating over the country: it was the end of Ron Weasley, because it had been the end of Harry and Hermione.

He did not know what happened next, and he did not care either: the following hours were filled by hugs and shouts of victory and cries and congratulations; by people laughing and people clutching his hands and people wondering how this boy could had defeated the Dark Lord instead the Chose One, Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived.

All the fighters, finally, were called to go to the Great Hall, to celebrate Voldemort's death and mourn victims' deaths. The crowd tried to drag Ron, but he stayed in the very spot until he was alone.

He approached to the two bodies lying among many more and cried. That could not be true. He clutched Harry and Hermione's arms, begging they don't leave him, as if the power of that grip might carry them back. He leaned and kissed softly Hermione's lips. They were still warm. He saw she was grasping the ring he had just appeared for her, and a tear was frozen upon her face. Ron noticed Harry was grasping a black stone. He took both of them and went away.

Just a year after, Ronald Weasley found himself as the new Minister for Magic. He didn't agree nor deny it at the fervent claims of that he had to be the Minister; he couldn't think of anything. He couldn't see his family surrounding him, hugging him, understanding with all their souls Ron's grief, that state of conscious paralysis. And his family thought that he had agreed to try and start a new life, but he hadn't. He became soon in a kind of automatic being: eating, sleeping, signing, talking, agreeing; all was useless and he did it with utter indifference.

And night after night since he found it out, when he finally arrived home, he will squeeze the ring, and he will turn the black stone over and over in his fingers, and an ethereal figure will appear at his head and with a soft kiss that was less than a breeze, less than the air of a whisper, Hermione will tell him how much she missed him, and how sorry she was, for everything was her fault. And tears will cross his face, trying to touch her when she is nothing than but a light, trying to comfort her as he knew it was pointless, tying not to let her go when they were separated by nothing but life and death.

Night and nights of insomnia, of sitting together at dinner, he eating, she watching, of vain attempts to trick Death … and in the morning, she was the only one with the power to make him waking up and resuming his life, because life still was a fact for him, she will say. And she will return to the shadows, when everybody was supposed to be happy and free of the bonds of life, everybody except for her, with her only love away for more than miles.

But that night, it will be different. The decision was taken, the poison was ready. In the same glass, he spilt the mortal dose, and sat down on the sofa. And there will be no rustle at his side, because she would never agree; it would all be a surprise.

The Firewhisky burnt his throat before the bitter venom: then a stabbing, a sick feeling that made him close his eyes, and then he wasn't there anymore: she was his past, his present and his future, and these were nothing but Ron and Hermione. ─


End file.
